Tangled Web UK Review January 2009
Reasonable Doubts by
Gianrico Carofiglio
pbk out July 07
(Bitter Lemon Press)
at £8.99
This is a really excellent book, with a straightforward plot written beautifully in the first person.
It is by an Italian lawyer, about an Italian lawyer and again goes to support the old adage that one should only write concerning what one knows about - I only wish crime novelists would remember this when they write about forensic pathology!
The main character is Guido, a defence attorney in Bari in Calabria, real Mafia country. His wife has left him and he is feeling lonely and worthless, when a beautiful half-Japanese woman comes to ask him to handle her husband’s appeal against a sixteen-year sentence for drug smuggling.
Though reluctant to get involved, he agrees, though the husband turns out to be a former Fascist thug who had beaten the lawyer up when they were boys. Guido has fantasised about getting even with him for twenty years but now his professional ethics conflicts with his personal desires. When he falls for the lovely wife and goes to bed with her, the dilemma increases, as if the appeal failed, the coast would be clear for him for years to come.
The story develops and much of the action takes place in the court-room, with a great deal of legal argument and ethical pondering. The writing is superb, but here is another dilemma. This was written in Italian and this is an English translation by Howard Curtis. So how much of the praise should go to the author and how much to the translator? The latter can make or break a book and this has caused some dispute in the Crime Writer’s Association when foreign books are entered for awards - who should get the kudos, the writer or the translator?
But forget that and enjoy this excellent and somewhat unusual crime story.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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